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EDITORIAL: Using sick children to cut the deficit

News Herald (Panama City, FL)

May 13--The president and his budget director propose to rescind $15 billion in expenditures authorized by Congress -- including $7 billion from the Children's Health Insurance Program -- in order to ensure the federal government "spends precious taxpayer dollars in the most efficient, effective manner possible."

"Given the long-term fiscal constraints facing our nation, we must use all available means to put our fiscal house back in order," states a letter from Mike Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

To quote the brash, bratty tennis star John McEnroe, who famously questioned a chair umpire's call during the 1981 Wimbledon Championships: "You can't be serious. You cannot be serious!"

Putting the nation's fiscal house back in order is, indeed, an important task.

But Mulvaney, President Donald Trump and leaders of Congress should have prioritized the financial challenges facing the United States before approving a massive, $1.5 trillion tax cut that, by all accounts, will significantly drive up the federal deficit and debt.

They did not do so, however, so now the Trump administration purports to demonstrate fiscal restraint by slashing the budget for CHIP, a program that costs $14 billion annually and provides health-insurance coverage to kids from families whose earnings exceed the very low threshold for Medicaid but who by no means can afford private-sector coverage.

Nearly all of these children belong to working parents whose employers don't offer subsidized insurance. Some 375,000 children in Florida qualify for the coverage.

The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration contends that the cuts won't limit access to health care. But U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, isn't buying it: "There are plenty of other places we should cut before we touch health care for children," Buchanan said this week.

Part of the funding targeted for "rescission" would come from the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund, which Joan Alker, an expert in children's access to health care, described as a "rainy day fund." It is designed to prevent states, which administer CHIP, from running out of money in the event of increased enrollment, according to Alker. The other share represents dollars that have been budgeted but not yet expended; in the past, Congress has allowed these funds to be used for other worthwhile programs that aid children and families.

Earlier this year, after families worried that CHIP funding would expire due to a political stalemate, Congress finally agreed to restore and extend funding. The restoration and extension received bipartisan support, which the program has enjoyed since its creation in 1997 -- when Democrat Bill Clinton was president and Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and Senate.

But the 2018 legislation provided little room for comfort. Funding to states was to remain stagnant for two years and then be reduced by 11.5 percent.

The administration's proposed reductions would compound the challenges. They deserve to be rejected. Seriously.

This editorial first appeared in the Herald Tribune, a News Herald sister paper with GateHouse Media.